Animals vs Mutants Review

Asia keeps pumping good-looking, poorly-designed content on Google Play, choke-full of free-to-play restrictions and mechanics. I can’t see why anybody would play another rip-off of a ten-year old flash game, and yet thousands of downloads suggest that there’s a reason. Animals vs Mutants is exactly that kind of game, with more mechanics than a Formula-1 pit-stop, and with just as short service time.

In Animals vs Mutants, the player is filling the shoes of a hero, whose animal friends get kidnapped by Dr. Wicked (literally his name â€“ no wonder the guy went bonkers) and his army of mutants. It’s now time to build an army of cute but bloodthirsty animals and attack his strongholds to rescue them. The gameplay is a familiar 1-D strategy. One base on the player’s side, one on the enemy’s. The player controls a hero and can summon various animals to help destroy the base, while the enemy does the same. Two armies meet somewhere in the center and whoever is stronger, pushes closer to the base, while waiting for the reinforcements to come closer. The new mechanics here is that different animals fight better on different terrains. Pandas can roll downhill and push back the enemies below; squirrels can shoot acorns uphill, and platypuses get better stats underwater.

It’s all fine, but as always, instead of demanding better skills down the line, Animals vs Mutants just throws bloated bullet sponges at the player, and waits until they get enough upgrades and equipment for their animals and hero to out-sponge the enemy. Speaking of which, there’s tons of equipment that can be purchased, upgraded and swapped, each unit type can be improved, and there are special superpowers that cost gold to regenerate. In other words, the game is a market in and of itself, filled with stuff that you need to purchase if you don’t want to use an energy point for nothing. Oh, right, there’s also energy. I didn’t hit the paywall while I played, but I’m sure that it’s somewhere in there, further along the line. And even if it wasn’t, the game isn’t all that interesting, although I did enjoy it. I say enjoy it, I mean I tolerated it. I say tolerated, but what I mean is I poured acid on my face and danced on a fire ant colony in needle shoes to distract me. The little animals are all pretty cute though.